The Trainee’s Operative Experiences for General Surgery in Thailand
Keywords:
Electronic logbook, electronic operative record, essential procedure, resident’s operative experience, trainee’s operative experienceAbstract
Background: In Thailand, each trainee in general surgery is requested to have experiences of 100 majoroperative procedures as an operator and 400 operative procedures as an assistant during 4 years. Many major
procedures were recommended in the course syllabus, but some trainees seemed to select easier cases to operate,
resulting in insufficient experiences as a general surgeon.
Materials & Methods: An electronic logbook program was implemented since the academic year 2006. In this
study, only the data of trainees who started their training from the academic years 2008 and 2009 were analyzed, because
they had just finished their training in the academic years 2011 and 2012.
Results: The electronic operative records of 162 trainees were analyzed. By average, each trainee operated 257
procedures as a chief operator (100 required), and assisted 482 procedures (400 required) during 4-year training. As
an operator, the first procedure was appendectomy, followed by inguinal hernia operation, and upper GI endoscopy.
As an assistant, the first procedure was laparoscopic cholecystectomy, followed by median sternotomy and inguinal
hernia operation. Among 15 essential procedure groups, the average number of performance per trainee was over the
minimal requirement for almost all procedures, except thyroidectomy and liver surgery.
Conclusion: The electronic logbook operative records program allowed a more accurate and easier analysis of
the trainees’ operative experiences than the written logbook system. All trainees had operative experiences more than
the eligibility criteria.
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